Archive for the “running” Category

I’m almost at my £500 target!!! Thank you so much to everyone who has donated so far. Your contributions with help SAMH to do some much needed work with children. Their Going to Be campaign is highlighting the lack of support for children and young people who have mental ill health. You can donate HERE.

Young people need our help now. Here’s why:

Three children in every class will have experienced mental health problems by the time they’re 16.

Every day, 20 young people don’t get the help they need for mental health problems. That’s 7,248 young people last year. These young people were rejected from receiving a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) usually following a referral from their GP, but we don’t know why or what has happened to them.

When it comes to finding help for your mental health, only a quarter of young people know where to go.

One call every thirty minutes to ChildLine is from a young person experiencing suicidal thoughts.

Last quarter, in Scotland, almost 7,426 young people were on a waiting list to be assessed for CAMHS.

A half marathon is 13.1 miles or 21km for those of your who are metrically minded.

Except it’s not really.

At 43 years old you can’t really just rock up at the start line and expect to survive that length of run. So you train. You run 4 times a week for months. You start off at where you are and you do more and more miles.

For me the start was a slow 5k. You add some distance to one run each week and this becomes your long, slow run. Next comes a short recovery run which is more of a really slow jog to get your muscles working after the long, slow run. The other two runs are where the speed comes. A quick 5k, a tempo run for 8k or maybe a run that you up the pace a couple of times.

Pretty soon the miles are starting to rack up.

I’ve spent 8 hours running this month and have covered nearly 80km (50 miles). There are still two weeks of the month left!

Why am I telling you this?

Well, because when you sponsor someone to run a 13.1 mile race you’re actually sponsoring them to actually run close to 200 miles.

Every mile adds up and every mile counts.

Just like the sponsorship you’ve been so generous to donate.

So far I’ve raised £460.

That’s amazing. A massive thanks to all of you for your support and generosity. It’s always exciting when my phone makes the ‘Just Giving’ ping noise meaning that someone else has just donated. You have been so generous.

I was leading worship at Carluke URC on Sunday and mentioned that I was running. The people there sponsored me £117. That kind of support is really overwhelming. You are all part of the team…

£1,020 could pay for a Macmillan nurse for a week, helping people living with cancer and their families receive essential medical, practical and emotional support.

£537 could pay for a Macmillan social worker or family support worker for a week. They work with community and social services agencies to help people manage the social and practical problems of living with cancer.

£390 could cover the costs for a person to attend a small physical activity scheme in a rural area for a year.

Between £200,000 and £600,000 could pay for a new chemotherapy suite in a local hospital.

Between £3 million and £7 million could pay for a new oncology and outpatient unit in a hospital.

So, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged about running, and in particular my half marathon run with my brother-in-law, Scott, in October. To be honest, our training hasn’t been going well, between writing essays, work and Scott moving house it’s all a bit frantic. But we’re committed and tomorrow I will run. Promise.

Why is this so important to us?

Well, in just 14 weeks we’re running the Great Scottish Run in Glasgow in memory of my mum, Annis, and we would dearly like you to help us raise £2,000 to help a brilliant organisation who helped her over the last 16 years of her life, macmillan cancer care.

We know that £2,000 is a lot of money and that you are all skint, but it’s been a cracking day and I’m sure you’re sitting somewhere nice with a nice cold beer or a tasty ice cream.

How about, instead of having another one, you donate £3 to macmillan instead? You donate £3 and tomorrow I’ll run 3 miles. Deal?

Just text STEW68 £3 to 70070 or visit our justgiving site and donate there.

We and the thousands of people who are living with cancer and it’s effects would really appreciate it.

My brother-in-law Scott and I have decided to run the Great Scottish Run Half Marathon on 4th October in Glasgow in memory of my mum, Annis. We’re raising funds for Macmillan Cancer Care, a charity very close to my mum’s heart. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999 and secondary cancer in 2013. Throughout her battle Macmillan provided amazing support and care for both her and my dad.

Neither Scott nor I have run 13.1 miles in a long time so your support would be greatly appreciated.

Well, rejection from the Virgin London Marathon ballot. 3 time unlucky for me.

To be honest I’m stuck somewhere between disappointment and relief.

The disappointment comes because London is one of the big 4. It’s a world marathon major. It is one of themarathons on most runner’s lists to run. One day I want to do it. I could try for a charity place but I don’t fancy trying to raise the £2,500 most charities demand for a place.

The relief comes from the sensible part of my head that says, ‘You’ve been injured, again. What on earth do you want to sign up for all those long runs in the winter for?’. London comes early in the year. The end of April might be well into spring down south but it can still be cold and wet here. Long runs in that kind of weather are absolutely no fun. I’m pretty sure I came close to hypothermia a couple of times when I was training for Edinburgh.

And I know that part of my head is probably right… but…

Targets… goals… those work for me.

I ran 6k today. That’s my first proper run for nearly two months. I’ve missed it, much more than I thought I would. I feel better when I run. I feel more alert, I sleep better, I eat better, I drink more water, I can concentrate better and I get more done. It gives me time to think, to process, to have ideas and to work off frustrations.

So, I’m going to continue the rehab. I will do my exercises. I will train through the winter and next year I’ll set out to run PBs over 5k, 10k and half marathon (I’ve still never run under 2 hours for a half!). There will be no 26.2 mile runs for me in 2014.

But I might put my name in the ballot for London again next year… maybe 2015 will see another crack at a marathon. Maybe…

On Sunday I followed in the footsteps of Olympic heroes in the National Lottery Anniversary Run.

Last year I won a place on the Olympic Park Run and was one of the first to cross the Olympic finishing line in the newly opened Olympic Stadium. At the time I thought that was a one in a lifetime experience…

The National Lottery, one of the biggest funders of the 2012 Olympics, thought otherwise.

Legacy was always one of the questions hanging over the Olympics. How would the Games translate into wider participation? Well, 10,000 people signed up, paid up, and ran the anniversary run with 5,000 people, children and their families, taking part in the 2.5k family run.

This year David was also able to get a place so we set off on Saturday morning for a weekend in London with our better halves. The 7am flight from Glasgow to Luton is always a shock to the system. It means a 4am start.

It also means that being shattered for the rest of the day! We spent most of Saturday morning drinking coffee and trying to wake up and shopping at Westfield, then it was off to check in to our hotel out at Docklands, a nap and then off to the West End for dinner and The Phantom of the Opera.

I’ve seen the show on TV and we watched the movie the other night but there is always something magical about live theatre. Phantom didn’t disappoint.

Sunday morning started at 7am with a light breakfast then we took the DLR to Stratford, along with thousands of other runners and their supporters.

There was a a real sense of excitement as we wound our way through the shopping centre at Westfield and out towards the Olympic Park.

The last time I was here the park was a building site. All the major venues had been completed but the landscaping and temporary seating was still being installed. Just over a year later and the Olympic Park is in a similar state. The temporary venues have been removed and their sites are being redeveloped. The extension wings have been taken off the aquatics centre (photo above) making it look very different. The new glass walls are almost complete and the building looks great.

The race route was different this year. It even had a bit of cross country at the start!

It was also pretty tight and twisty so it was difficult to run at race pace at the start of the race. And it was hot and humid. Thankfully it was cloudy which kept the temperature down a bit.

It was a great run and you could feel the sense of excitement building as we wound our way towards the Olympic Stadium. At around 21 minutes a roar erupted from the crowd as the first runner entered the stadium. The noise was amazing, especially as the stadium was less than half full. It gave us a real sense of what it must have sounded like as Mo Farah was cheered round every lap of the 5,000m and 10,000m on that Super Saturday.

I was only just past half way!

I was looking forward to the tunnel more than the stadium.

As I entered the tunnel under the stadium I could hear the crowd… but not the crowd from today. It was the crowd from Mo’s gold medal run, along with commentary from Steve Cram and Chariots of Fire in the background. I could feel a wave of emotion sweep over me as I pushed my pace knowing I was close to 40 minutes. There’s light at the end of the tunnel… brilliant sunlight.

The thing I noticed about the track is the bounce. Maybe it’s because you come straight off the concrete of the tunnel but the track is fantastic to run on. And all of a sudden you find yourself on the home straight and crossing the line, gasping and smiling and knowing that you have followed in the footsteps of legends.

Once we found Pam and Avril in the crowd we sat in the sun, ate our way through the nuts, biscuits and crisps in the goody bag, and watched the rest of the runners come in.

It’s fair to say that the runners came in all shapes and sizes. I stood to applaud a woman with crutches cross the line but also for a woman who must have been at least 20 stones struggle down the last 100 meters. At some point she must have thought “I can do this. I can run 5 miles.” And she did. She made it, along with all those others who must have wondered what on earth made them sign up, wondered if they could do it on such a hot and humid day and, as they crossed the line, knew that I can do this I can do whatever I put my mind to.

That’s the real Olympic Legacy.

There is something amazing about a mass participation event. There’s a sense of community, shared experience, a knowledge of what it takes to get to the start line, the gratitude to those whose support makes all the training possible. If you’ve never entered a run, try it. You never know where you might find yourself…

For us the rest of the day involved a picnic from M&S, a shower and a change of clothes and off into London for a wander around Harrods, a fantastic (and very expensive) cake from the Gand Cafe, sunbathing in Hyde Park and dinner at Jamie Oliver’s Union Jacks at Covent Garden.

Monday was the hottest day in years. 33C. We headed back to the air conditioning of Westfield in the morning for some breakfast and shopping then to Trafalgar Square for a sandwich and then the National Gallery and a wander round Whitehall. By late afternoon we were just hot and tired so diner was Yo! sushi at St Pancras and then off to Luton for the flight home.